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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29856825">the ghost of memory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/conchorde/pseuds/conchorde'>conchorde</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Memory Loss, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, a "what's going on in bucky's mind during ca:tws" fic, spoiler alert: nothing fun is happening in there</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:14:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,014</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29856825</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/conchorde/pseuds/conchorde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He is not supposed to remember. He cannot remember.</p><p>And yet.</p><p>[Or; the catalyst in the remaking of Bucky Barnes.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes &amp; Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the ghost of memory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Bucky has about 13 lines in the entirety of the ca:tws. I wanted to know what was going on in his head.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>i.</p><p>Hand-to-hand, his mission objective fights well. Military. Trained. The sniper rifle and two pistols leave no marks on the shield—<em>the shield, </em>a long-quiet ghost whispers in his ear when he disarms the target. He shakes his head to clear it, and the ghost disappears, leaving only the mission at hand. He pulls a knife from his belt. Flips it. He cannot get close enough. Unacceptable. Mission parameters state that he must—</p><p>His target throws him. He rolls to absorb the impact. The mask stays behind.</p><p>“<em>Bucky</em>?”</p><p>He looks back, and his response is engrained. “Who the hell is Bucky?”</p><p>He knows a thousand ways to kill this man. He is a weapon. He can be nothing else. He cannot have a name.</p><p>A moment later, he is knocked to the asphalt by a secondary assailant. He rights himself quickly; stares at the man standing in the debris they caused. The shield glints in the sun. Its star flashes at him, an almost-mirror of the star on his arm.</p><p>The ghost moves in his mind again. The ghost knows the words. <em>St—</em></p><p> </p><p>ii.</p><p>He lives in the present. He is not supposed to remember. He cannot remember.</p><p>But there was a train. He knows this. He—he doesn’t know how he knows this. There was a train. A train and <em>Bucky!</em> and inches between their hands that turn into miles and a pit in his stomach and a sense of weightlessness and a scream wrenched from his soul and—</p><p> </p><p>iii.</p><p>The director hits him.</p><p>He swallows, brought to the present. His cheek throbs. Something courses through his veins. If he could feel, he might call it loathing. But he cannot feel, just as he cannot remember.</p><p>“The man on the bridge,” he says eventually, tone flat, voice rusty from disuse. “Who was he?”</p><p><em>The director is lying</em>, the ghost whispers, and he—he listens.</p><p>“I knew him,” he says, even as the director gives the order. His heart rate spikes. There is a pit in his stomach <em>just like before</em>. The assistants push him backwards, into the chair. He tastes rubber. The restraints clamp down upon his arms. The machine whirrs to life.</p><p>He does not resist. He is not meant to resist.</p><p><em>But I knew him</em>, his mind whispers anyway, and the ghost nods. <em>I knew him, I knew him, I—</em></p><p>His world dissolves into static.</p><p> </p><p>iv.</p><p>“Please,” the man—his target—says before him. The shield dangles from the target’s fingers. “Please, don’t make me do this.”</p><p>He doesn’t move from his position on the catwalk. Cолдат, a cold part of his mind speaks in static, and he tightens his jaw.</p><p>The man throws the shield—<em>the shield</em>, the ghost cries—and he ducks. Pulls out his guns, then his knives.</p><p>They dance.</p><p> </p><p>v.</p><p>Across the catwalk, down onto the glass.</p><p>A bullet grazes his target. He throws the shield that the man left behind. He catches up, and his knife sinks into the man’s shoulder. The man yells. (His gut twists at the sound. He tells himself it’s the ghost.) Within mission parameters. Acceptable.</p><p>The man pulls out the knife a second later. Not within mission parameters.</p><p>He fends the man off long enough to finally grab the tiny green chip. <em>Destroy it</em>, his mission commands. <em>Destroy him. He will not back down from a fight. End him before he ends us.</em></p><p>(The ghost inside him stirs. <em>That little guy from Brooklyn</em>, the phantom murmurs in his mind. <em>I’m following him.</em>)</p><p>The static reprimands him. Я готов отвечать, it insists. Я готов отвечать.</p><p>“Drop it,” the man pleads, and the static screams, and his right shoulder is dislocated. The edges of his vision gray out.</p><p> </p><p>vi.</p><p>When he awakens, he finds a pistol and finds—finds his <em>target</em>. He takes aim. A shot through the heart. Fatal. A shot he’s taken many times before.</p><p>He misses.</p><p>The Winter Soldier does not miss. He is not programmed to miss. There are <em>consequences</em> for missing.</p><p>He does it twice more.</p><p>The man staggers, but the chip clicks into place.</p><p><em>Mission failed</em>.</p><p> </p><p>vii.</p><p>The metal column crushes him.</p><p>He doesn’t fear death. (<em>Death would be kinder than this existence</em>, the ghost in his mind hums with a voice that sounds like his own. <em>I've begged for death before</em>.) He doesn’t fear anything. He cannot fear. He is not programmed to fear. He is a weapon. Weapons do not feel. Weapons cannot feel.</p><p>(He is afraid.)</p><p>He can feel the helicarrier dropping out of the sky. He can feel the loss in altitude. (<em>He could, then, too</em>.) There is a pit in his stomach again. There’s always a pit in his stomach.</p><p>The man nears him, swaying with the ship and his wounds. Trapped under the column, he is defenseless. He looks with wide eyes over to the man; tries one last time to get out from under the metal. The metal does not give. He has no choice but to wait for the click of a bullet rolling into its chamber. (<em>Death would be kinder</em>.)</p><p>His target pulls him out and he doesn’t understand.</p><p>“You know me, Bucky.”</p><p>He just <em>stares</em> at the man. He is nameless. doesn’t know anyone. He says as much. He doesn’t—</p><p>And yet.</p><p>“I’m with you to the end of the line,” the man says finally, exhausted, defeated, and—and he can hear it echoed a hundred times, in a hundred different tones, in Brooklyn and Germany and he knows the weight of those words on his own tongue and that <em>doesn’t make sense</em>.</p><p>(<em>Yes, </em>the ghost of his memory says, <em>it does</em>.)</p><p>The ship breaks apart.</p><p>There is a pit in his stomach as he watches the man fall. If he had reached out, their fingers would have been inches apart once again.</p><p> </p><p>viii.</p><p>His hand finally closes the gap at the bottom of the Potomac, and he gives the rescue he never received.</p><p>(<em>Or perhaps</em>, he dares to think with the voice of James Buchanan Barnes, a ghost from before, <em>Steve did rescue me after all.</em>)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Quick translations (thanks, google):<br/>Cолдат - Soldier<br/>Я готов отвечать - Ready to comply</p></blockquote></div></div>
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